


Fairy Tale Ending

by dorothy_notgale and Tromperie (dorothy_notgale)



Series: Grim Tales [1]
Category: Prince Lestat - Fandom, Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Dark, M/M, Marrying Prince Charming, Meanwhile in New York, POV Multiple, Politics, Prince Lestat Era, Relationship Discussions, Serial Monogamy, Trinity Gate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-09
Updated: 2016-12-09
Packaged: 2018-09-07 12:19:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8800540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorothy_notgale/pseuds/dorothy_notgale%20and%20Tromperie
Summary: Isn't it nice to know a lot?When Lestat returned to lead the newly-constituted Vampire Court, he claimed his beloved from where Louis had been waiting, part of the tiny Trinity Gate coven for the past decade.Everyone knows Louis lies. Everyone knows that Louis draws others like moths to his flickering flame.Everyone knows Louis belongs, body and soul, to his for-all-time Brat Prince Charming.Everyone knows these old, old stories.And a little bit, not.





	1. The Emperor's New Clothes

**Benji Mahmoud**

Seven years is an interminable time for a teenager. More so for Benjamin Mahmoud, once it finally sank in that he would never grow; that he would never change from night to night (oh, he’d been told of course, but when a 12 year old is offered the chance to be Peter Pan they assume they’ll never change their mind). That in fact every story that Armand had warned him of, waved away by Marius' knowledgeable hand, had come to pass. 19 years still looked like twelve and so would 270, after the walled garden around him had crumbled to dust. 

He didn't want to be mortal again, he was sure of that. He reminded himself that everyone in his family had been small, and that Daniel had grown up only to be sent away. They were all three in Neverland, in a garden he hadn't even noticed Armand building those first few blissful years. 

Night Island had been abandoned by the time Armand had found him and Sybelle; he knew about it only from the books, the best source of answers when Armand's lips stayed firmly shut (still fuming, he could sense, though he didn't tell Armand his gifts were already so strong). 

They never ventured far, the three of them. And no strange vampire could set foot on the isle of Manhattan without Armand's knowledge. And always he drove them away, setting the most bone-chilling fear in the veins that sent them to the opposite corners of the earth.

So it had been, so it was, so it would be forever, when sometime in the early years of a new century Benji felt a different dead man's mind in his home.

He'd seen this one before, of course--ministering to Lestat's body as it lay in state in the chapel. Clad in black shirts with gold buttons, hair long and glossy and enticing, soft as water in his pleas for Lestat to wake. And of course he'd read the books.

Everyone read the books.

Still, it wasn't normal nor permitted, and he felt himself stiffen as Louis de Pointe du Lac advanced, near enough that Benji had to tilt his head up, green eyes taking in his Pokemon tee shirt and torn dungarees, his light-up sneakers. It was suddenly  _ humiliating _ , and he hated it--

A hand, a long pale hand, smooth as that of any gentleman who'd never had to work. Benji knew hands like that; they bought and sold lives. But this one merely hovered, open and vulnerable, a little above waist height.

"Good evening, Mr. Mahmoud," said a voice soft as the uncalloused hand, vowels round and rhotics obliterated with seventy years in the American South. "It's a pleasure, finally."

He took the hand too hurriedly, waiting for the gentlemanly act to drop,  looking up with fierce eyes that dared this newcomer to laugh. "It's Benji," he challenged.

"As you like." He was utterly unfazed, his mind a deceptive placid pond against Benji's inquiries. "Armand's spoken highly of you."

They withdrew their touch at the same time, little 5'2" Benji (why had he said that? it had thrilled him for a moment, and then beneath that he'd felt a depthless terror at hearing his unseen age voiced) and soft-all-over Louis. "Armand isn't here," he lied, knowing Louis was weak. That he had no choice, as the books told it, other than to believe what was told to him. 

"If you have a sitting room, I'm content to wait." Those shining white hands were clasped before him again. 

Not quite ready to throw the vampire out if Armand really had called for him (or risk the ire of the absent Lestat, who these days seemed as much boogeyman as savior), Benji brought him to the open parlor where Sybelle was plucking away at a new piece Amand had brought her. The same run of notes over and over and over, to be repeated until they were perfect and then played in precise mechanism like a music box, the only hint of visible change the small smile on her lips. 

"You can wait here," he said, but didn't stray far. Louis couldn't kill them, probably. But then, Armand had cautioned him once never to presume what a vampire could and couldn't do.

Louis sat calmly, head tilted to one side in an image of listening despite their vampiric senses making such strain unnecessary. He wasn't quite anything from the books; no polished cloak-wearing paragon, nor a tattered wretch. Just a man in slacks and button-down, hair held back with an elastic wrapped three times about the tail at the base of his skull.

He closed his eyes as Sybelle tapped out her notes, lashes resting on his cheeks, lips slightly parted. He looked so harmless.

Benji wondered what would happen if he tried to do as Armand did--project his menace, his hate. Would that banish this intrusion?

Instead he brought his bulky lap-top computer into the room and lay down on the floor, suffering through the screech of its connection to the World Wide Web and the slow loading of his chat groups. He was meant to protect Sybelle, as she protected him in her way, as they both had protected Armand and he them since. It was one good thing he'd learned, that to protect others was a strength. A moral imperative, some might say.

She played on, and the half-stranger's head swayed in the current of her notes. She gave no notice, though a touch of their minds assured Benji she knew they were observed.

"You might have told me you were here." Armand's voice was barely a whisper; it rarely had to be more, the way they spoke. That gift Benji truly did cherish, whatever else was true. Armand's mind was a siren song against the rocks, whispering and beckoning in time with the humming strings and hammers of the piano. There were days he forgot to speak at all, between the quiet congress of their little gathering and the possibility opened by the keyboard beneath his fingertips. He pretended to be absorbed. 

"You knew I was here." Louis didn't open his eyes. "You invited me." 

Armand offered no rebuttal, and the room was quiet as the music came to another brief stop. Armand crossed the room then in small gliding steps, laying a hand on Sybelle's shoulder and kissing her temple. They stayed like that a moment, mind to mind, and when he withdrew she began a different piece, fingers flying at almost breakneck piece though Benji was confident he had never heard her play it before. It was fast, frantic. Breathless. 

"It's unlike you to be nostalgic," Louis said, unfazed as the notes smoothed into legato joy. "Chopin." He let out a long, unnecessary breath through his nose, something not even Benji did anymore. 

"You enjoyed it. It was the last time you said so." Armand was standing with arms folded, looking a facsimile of vulnerable in shirtsleeves and slacks. Quite the difference from the flannel Benji had seen him sporting on the streets the night before. 

"I suppose I did." The conversation withered on the vine, neither bothered to carry it forward. Benji waited. He was used to it -- Armand's long, eerie calm, his piercing eyes, had a way of breaking those who came to their home. He could stand still as a statue until daybreak, outlasting any poor fool who might think they had the upper hand. 

The clock ticked near to ten. "I want to speak with you privately," Armand said. 

Louis hadn't moved. "So you mentioned." 

"Come and see if you find my terms agreeable." And he  _ went _ to their strange intruder, offering one delicate hand that was ignored even as Louis rose to walk by his side. 

To his charges Armand said nothing, only glancing over his shoulders with a look that dared the consequences of interruption. 

They all knew it was already decided.

***

After that night, Louis 'lived' with them, there in their little garden. (A serpent, Benji feared; he'd read the books, knew the way that sweet face hid a fount of lies, how that modesty covered temptation. Fires followed where Armand's ex-lover dwelt.)

But there he was, night after night, listening patiently to Sybelle and occasionally making a request--only when she tired of her practice or became frustrated, never at the height of her concentration. He was manipulative in that way.

He liked composers from his own time, but new ones, too; Glass and the like. Armand, of course, always listened regardless, enjoying the sounds produced without seeming to differentiate one from the next.

Sybelle enjoyed it, though Benji cautioned her to reserve her judgment of the person doing the asking.

(Benji had to admit he'd been amused when the request was for Cage's 4'33'', and she'd complied.)

Louis showed an interest, was the thing--and the danger. He asked about Benji's pursuits, gleaning the basics of computer use, and thank God Benji wasn't stuck teaching him newsgroups and AltaVista as he would have a few years back.

He didn't use passwords on his personal machine, leaving his data as insecure as his very mind, and when Benji looked it was all poetry searches, depression chatrooms, and codependency fora. And parenting sites.

The last irked him most of all. He spent long weeks on edge, waiting for Louis to pull him aside to have a "special talk."  _ About what _ , Benji imagined himself scoffing inside his own head. He'd barely grown a budding curiosity about sex before he died, and that bud had been decisively snipped; his first victim had been a drug dealer, luring him in even if Armand had been the one to bite; he disliked the feeling of drinking from drunks, and he would never grow taller. And Armand had long ago taught him how to kill. Louis' nervous fretting was nothing but an unnecessary nuisance. They already had their protector, after all. 

Armand, who made the world for them. Armand, who loved them and hadn't wanted them. Armand, who was infinitely patient and generous, whose mind was an impenetrable labyrinth. 

Armand who sat on the railing of their balcony in the velvet-dark night with Louis beside him, talking over nothing of consequence. Armand letting go of his grip and leaning back as if he might fall, down and down and down to the ground below. Armand in Louis' arms as the latter rushed to catch him like a mortal, both of their faces naked with shock, then fear and bafflement. Then--

He didn't stay to see  _ then _ . 

"Would you like to walk with me?" Louis phrased all of his invitations gently, betraying almost no difference between the perfunctory and the sincere. Whatever Benji said he would react just the same, with a solemn nod of his head and the smallest, briefest flicker around the eyes. 

Benji drew his knees up, picking at the hole in the jeans he hadn't replaced. Why bother? "Where?" 

"I hadn't made up my mind," Louis said. At least the excursion seemed real: Louis was dressed in a soft black coat and scarf, gloves in hand.

"Then why invite someone along?" He was sullen, he knew. Sullen and willful, bitter against this endless night even as he gloried in the strength and the pleasure, for despite the theoretical severance from the world at large, vampires still had to live in it, and he still had to look up six or eight inches at this interloper. Always would. And he wasn't there to be patronized, like a tool to develop Armand's good graces.

"Because the nights are long," Louis said, poetry too close and impossible given his well-known impairments. "I may die tomorrow; I would know others while I can. And besides," he smiled ruefully, odd pragmatism giving a tang to the rim of his thoughts, "this city is not one with which I am familiar."

Paris--New Orleans--Miami--San Francisco--Benji knew this man's history, his footprints over the globe. And he knew he was a liar, first and foremost.

But it could be--amusing, to play the guide and see where Louis would allow himself to be led, for the sake of his con.

So he smiled like an ingenious child and said yes, counter to all the 'no's he'd said before.

Louis, the stupid bastard, returned the smile flavored with something like hope.

New York was his city now, whatever had come before. The child he'd been before was dead. The people who'd used him would all be dead while he stayed the same. But he still remembered how to get lost. 

It was simple to walk ever so slightly too fast for Louis to keep up, to choose winding roads with sharp corners, and finally to clamber up the side of a building and slip away into the night. Louis killed whoever crossed his path. He didn't need to feel guilty about it. 

He returned home near dawn to find Louis in his usual chair, a small book open in his hand. He smiled and apologized for being unable to keep up, and as he did Sybelle turned and looked at him with eyes that knew what he'd done. 

Neither of them said anything more, and Armand didn't appear at all. Benji fell to sleep with the smallest seed of guilt in the pit of his stomach. 

Louis didn't ask him to go walking again. But he refused to stop asking questions, almost as incessant as Armand if softer and more tactful in how the niceties fit together. 

Mostly.

"Are those clothes valuable to you?" Asked the pot, the sweater he wore around the house frayed at the edges, as he addressed the kettle. 

"Not really." They were comfortable, that was all. He didn't exactly want to walk into Kmart. "Why?" He regretted asking already. 

"You accept Armand's gifts in all other things, but not this." Louis' eyes were on him, soft green reflecting the glow of the bulky laptop. "I only wanted to know if I should take care with them." 

"You do the washing?" He asked, incredulous. There were servants for that. An endless stream who didn't look at them, though Benji had tried smiling awkwardly those first few years. 

"A few things." Louis nodded. He pointed at the hole at Benji's knee. "Those won't last much longer." He sank down to the carpet, legs folding beneath him.

"I can get another pair." 

"Is that what you want?" His tone never wavered, not coaxing nor accusing. 

"I haven't got any better ideas," Benji admitted under his breath, looking ahead and up and anywhere but into those eyes. 

"I don't know this city well," Louis said again, "but I imagine there are shops that would offer you any number of options. It's always been that way. Your imagination can't be taxed." 

Faith. That hurt worse than anything. "I just look like this. It's fine." It was worth not being erased. It was worth being with Armand and Sybelle.

"There is a saying, or there was--that the clothes make the man." Benji opened his mouth to snap back, be a little Bart Simpson smartass like he'd been for seven years, but Louis held a hand up almost pleadingly. "It's not true, of course; we are all ourselves, shaped by nature and experience. But the  _ right _ clothing can assist in allowing us  _ different _ experiences, at the least."

He tilted his head, features too gently shaped to be called severe for all their high-contrast vividity. He was a picture razor-cut from paper.

And he was remembering something. Someone. Fuzzy and staticked, held back from Benji as nothing ever was. Nothing but everything.

"I'm not a man," he said instead, feeling every inch of his stopped clock and every minute of the 19th year; his birthday would have been in July.

"Not if you don't wish it, no," Louis said, settling his back to the legs of a chair and tilting his long neck back to pillow his head upon the seat. His throat was... White. Not as pale as most of their kind, and it moved almost like a human's, mobile with tiny swallows and breaths and the very occasional pulse. He was a liar, deceptive to the core, and Benji saw what dazzled Armand about it all.

He looked like he'd just  _ let _ you eat him.

Obscene.

Benji rolled away, trying not to think about how those green eyes had left him behind to fix on the white-painted expanse of plaster ceiling as though there was something worth looking at beyond it.

"You told Daniel all those things." He stared at his own patch of wall. "What made him special?" One mortal chosen among many to bring them all together. It struck him sometimes when he'd read those books, a sense of many eyes and many minds all clinging to this communal raft. All started by this creature. 

"It was chance," Louis replied. "But...I'm thankful it was him. I wasn't, always, not least when I failed him. But many might not have been so moved. He was sincere. That’s what damned him."

A meeting of chance. A voice calling out over the city, too wounded to go on, weak enough at last to touch some lucky mortal life. Benji had met Daniel briefly, not long before he'd died. He'd asked who Benji was and then he'd laughed, laughed until red-tinted tears rolled down his cheeks and Marius had led him away. 

Neither of them were special, or they hadn't been. And they definitely weren’t “damned.” Not like this man across from him. 

"I wanted them to know." Louis' voice was soft as the rustle of pages, intimate as printed ink.

"Why did you hide, then?" Them. He was part of them now. 

"I didn't want them to find me. I only thought..." he sighed. "I'm no longer certain."

Liar. It was harder to remind himself of that in the face of this man,  with his low and mournful tone that infected the room. How could his mind be so open, yet seem so empty?

"I have some experience in showing people what I want them to see," Louis said, as if in response.

(He was supposed to be  _ deaf _ , dammit. Not just distant, scattershot, slipshod.)

"So I'd gathered," Benji said, hearing his voice harden into something it shouldn't. Something inappropriate for his face. But however weak Louis was, that skill was working.

Benji had heard Armand on the phone to TicketMaster more than once over the past weeks; had seen the way he stared, the way his long still-boyish fingers reached out but didn't quite touch the back of Louis' skull, that vulnerable spine you could crack or twist or simply use to hold a victim in place. Louis was weak, and he was dangerous, because the weak grow devious to survive.

So Benji told himself.

"I know," Louis' eyes fell closed, and he rested a wrist on his forehead. "You needn't trust me. I just wish--I thought, once, and then again, that there could be some sense of feeling among our kind. Responsibility, even among the damned." He laughed, soft as the rest of him. "No fool like an old fool."

The next night, Louis had gone out to hunt alone, as was his practice. Benji didn't care, but he did...wonder. What was truth, and what was a lie, and whose books lied more.

Louis wasn't  _ precisely _ different than advertised. Random, supposedly, and he certainly looked at them all the same way. But it wasn't an alleyway mugging or a simple assault. When he chose the one he wanted, Benji knew. A dead man would know. A dead  _ man _ would know.

Because Louis went even softer, melting like butter in summer sun. Flowing. He seduced the poor fucker without a word, lips parted, lids heavy, so blatantly inviting and honeyed. And the victim was three sheets to the wind on smoky-smelling jet fuel Benji had never tasted firsthand and never would, and they stumbled to Louis.

He couldn't be so indiscriminate.  _ Benji _ knew better. Armand had taught him, and Sybelle too, but here was Louis drinking and drinking, slitting a throat and stumbling away, one hand on the alley wall, softer and weaker and  _ drunker _ than ever and  _ anyone _ could kill him like this.

(It wasn't Benji's business. The only people who protected one another were himself and Armand and Sybelle--the others were all like Lovecraft's blind idiot gods, no responsibility for the worlds they'd birthed. But--)

This wasn't the Louis of the novel. This vampire was changed and strong, at long last caught by the blood Lestat had tried to foist on him all those years (Benji couldn't understand running from the offer; he'd been powerless, plenty, and he'd take any strength he could get now). 

He laid his hand on Louis' arm without a word, standing steady through the feral snarl that greeted him. Sure enough, nothing came of it.  

He started walking, and when Louis didn't follow he beckoned. "Come on. Let's go home." 

It was the first time he'd admitted it. 

Armand would be furious, that's why he did it (or so he told himself). They came to the mansion like mortals, lost in the roar of the subway system and the two of them almost at home among the other vagabonds. 

As they walked up the gated path Louis spoke of his search for others of their kind, torn from the little paperback novel and yet somehow vibrant and new on the night air. His anguish was palpable still as he told it. 

A community of vampires. A book, static though it was, that said "I am not alone." The thought was more and more on his mind lately. 

(Armand wasn't angry--Armand was speechless as Louis came to him and laid his forehead against the crown of the small vampire's curls, reaching out at last to take his long white hands). 

Did it matter, truly, if he lied? 

(It did, if he broke them. If they didn't break him.)

***

"If we went out," he asked. "What would you pick for me?"

Louis snorted softly, an indelicate and casual sound that felt weirdly intimate for how it failed to jive with others' descriptions of him. "I'm no fashion plate, Benji," he said, with a wave at his body, scarecrowlike in clothes stretched out of size if they were ever the correct fit to begin with.

"But--" Benji snapped his fangs shut, awaiting some semblance of invitation to continue though Louis couldn't know where. And of course Louis gave it, generous in his accommodation.

"But?" Courting, like he and Armand courted one another (though not quite, not so gentle and heated); like he courted Sybelle. Not dangerous, but ingratiating.

"But--you  _ can _ . You used to, back--in the beginning. And you still did with Daniel, even if it was fake."

_ Finely-tailored black suit, and all that nonsense _ . Louis' lies were lies when Lestat said so, and his truths truths when they could be dismissed. And his choices nonsense. Benji'd thought he only knew of his  _ past _ , though it'd been months, now. Surely this was a sort of present, even if it was only a gap in the scheme of things. Transition.

"I learned to dress a part, to be sure. And my family were great lovers of  _ la mode _ , which helped." He shouldn't be able to smile at memories like that, so warm and fond, not if he was the spiteful mourning monster. "But my skills have grown rusty; the last time I truly cared enough to be fashionable was nearly ninety years ago. The tailoring was so--severe. Gave a man a silhouette."

An image leaked, or perhaps was given to the very limits of his weak projection; a filmy vision of Armand under gas lamps, unsmoked cigarette between his lips, hair cut or hidden beneath a fedora-- _ trilby, wordless correction _ \--shoulders broadened and waist nipped in, legs long even in full trousers.

Even Armand's pretty, disarming face looked sharp in those clothes, cast in shadow as his amber eyes became glinting stones in the night. He looked...adult. Benji had forgotten that his protector had ever dressed like that -- ever since the mansion had risen from the earth Armand had taken to dressing as he liked, loose and billowing clothes that dwarfed his figure or frayed flannel from the pockets of grunge still persisting in New York's unfashionable addresses. And….yes, exquisite tailoring on the occasions when they faced the world at large. He always looked young, surrounded by those who knew he was old, and Benji had forgotten the luxury of that gift. 

"Like a gangster." He'd seen his share of movies, after all. Armand had hundreds, discarded by the handful once he tired of them (though there was a worn and faded tape of  _ Time Bandits _ at odds with all the pristine and cutting edge DVDs around it). And he was even smaller than Armand. "It wouldn't do any good."  _ They'll laugh at me _ . And even knowing he could kill any stranger without so much as lifting a finger, the teenager in him quailed at the thought. 

"As I believe I've said," Louis set his head on his palm. "A good tailor can do wonders." 

He assembled the outfit piecemeal at first, snatching a long dress shirt and a suit jacket and stealing Armand's slightly-too-small shoes. It looked like what it was: dressup. And then Louis, who had been absent the week long on mysterious business he refused to speak about (though there was ash on his clothes), returned with a small embossed card and an appointment time. 

Benji never wore anything else, after that. Not so anyone but his family could see. Armand. Sybelle. Louis.

Yes, Louis was family, and there was so much more to that than the scant ten-or-so dubiously accurate pages that existed on the subject of Louis  _ being _ family could ever have told him. There was that quiet support, the neediness, the  _ kindness _ . The way he made Armand smile and stare, a dumbfounded sort of thing that said Armand wasn't sure how this was all working without the things he'd done before.

The drunks.

The books hadn't mentioned that, none of them.

But vice was vice, and Louis was strong enough and still harmless enough for Benji to scoop up and escort home, listening always to the lamenting for home or community. Something--larger, but still  _ kind _ , or at least considerate.

He shoved Louis into proper clothes, too, learning to direct the attention of a room so that soon the tailors followed his own instructions without question, treating Louis as nothing so much as a mannequin for their formalwear; and then they went out.

(Buying pret-a-porter wasn't  _ ideal _ , of course, but it was the easiest thing for Sybelle, and she looked perfect regardless.)

The four of them at the opera, the concerts and shows--to some extent it was a gift to Armand, a reworking of old habits into a new and better whole. To some, it was for Sybelle, to hear others play music that she could carry with her and improve. And then there was the experience, the moments of being in an audience, connected in the listening hush; waiting for words and responding as some great gestalt entity.

***

When he decided to start his radio show, it was Louis he told. He'd been restless, pacing the mansion after weeks of searching Manhattan in vain for others of their kind. There were no others. They all quaked in fear of Armand, though Benji hadn't seen the former covenmaster kill anyone. (Any  _ vampires.) _ Since the chapel there'd been nothing, and he remembered that only a little. But still, if there were blood drinkers about, they steered clear of the little family of unwitting royalty.

"I want to do something!" He'd exploded, so desperate to move beyond his own skin that he imagined his skeleton growing, growing, until it burst forth from his fingertips. Men in high-rise offices called him "sir," now. Those who realized they couldn't ignore him looked at him with a kind of wariness, taking in his dark eyes under his crisp hat. 

"You have the houses," Louis pointed out. 

"There's no one to live in them." Mortals, of course. But he'd so hoped...

"There are. Lives as important as ours, however we're separated." Louis' rebuke was always cautious, but never silent. 

"I know that." That was always Louis' pulpit, the beautiful enduring strength of the human spirit, as if they as vampires (for all Louis spoke of family) lacked it. "I want to speak to them." 

"You're certain? It may bring you only pain." 

He was already in pain. Small. Helpless again. "How many people read  your book and assume you're dead? How many go looking for Lestat and find nothing?" Louis snorted at that, quiet and bitter. "They should know someone is there *now.* That someone is listening." 

Louis was silent, and Benji watched himself being watched. Louis was looking at him and beyond him, seeing some quiet calculation. 

"You'll need to practice," he said at last. "You must become a voice they will know as their own. That is good enough for the professionals." He held up a hand. "If you use trickery to gain your position you'll doubt yourself later. Whether it was worth it. Or if that is why you've failed." 

"Thanks for the confidence," Benji grumbled. Louis seemed to think Benji would march up to the station, briefcase in hand, as if he weren’t already preparing to wire himself into a pirated signal).

"I caution you because I believe this can be important. That others will find it important, as you do, to speak. And," Louis looked at his hands, as he often did when he thought he was hiding himself. "I am concerned for you." 

"I'll think about it." Benji conceded, through the part of him that was stung at the lack of immediate, all-encompassing support. Armand's only stipulation, when asked, was that Benji encourage no vampire to come to them. 

"I once invited a strange vampire to a theatre," he said, with that strange frozen smile on his face. "It isn't there any longer."

(The theater wasn't, but the vampire was. There every night.)

"Do you regret it?"

"Do I appear to you like a unicorn?" Armand parried, references frozen and dredged up from so many centuries that meaning was often impossible to parse unless he elaborated. "It does not matter whether I regret those particular deaths. The point is--" and here he gathered Benji in, suit whispering and probably creasing from the embrace. Unregretted, to feel Armand so close and loving. "--that I would regret yours, and Sybelle's, and Louis'. Would you not?"

Amber eyes, just a little taller than Benji, and a kiss to each cheek while their minds touched. The flames, the decapitations, the cessation of those wonders preserved beyond their given timelines. Candles snuffed, because it was thought "necessary" by one older and stronger (by Armand, in the past.)

"I would." He rested his head on Armand's shoulder. "All of you."

"All?" A waiting stillness, and Benji knew he'd fallen like everyone else.  _ Liar, liar, liar--don't trust that one. Don't believe that pretty face. _

But the face was the least of it, and so he nodded wordlessly into Armand's ratty sweatshirt. "All."

"I'm glad."

Ten years. Practically nothing, in the scheme of things, as the world warred and the people changed and Benji took in reports of killings, family abandoned and slain for not being the elite.

Ten years to grow comfortable. Safe.  _ Loved _ .

He should have known better.


	2. Odile

**Louis de Pointe du Lac**

"They're coming," was the first thing Louis said about it. He'd known, from the night Armand had led Antoine into their private sanctuary, that the sacred peace they shared was broken now--as surely as he'd known it the night he'd told Claudia how she was made.

It wasn't Antoine's fault, truly. He had been broken as surely as the rest of them, and his pleas for forgiveness had been so anguished and pathetic that Louis had relented, though some small part of him would always remember the mortal terror of seeing that newly white face beneath their window. This young man was not the same, no more than Lestat was the same man Louis had met centuries ago. He tried not to dwell on such thoughts. 

But there was no choice now. They were all gathering, and Benji had taken it into his head to call for Lestat, believing in the godlike figure and not the man riddled with flaws whom Louis had loved and lost over and over again. 

"They're coming," he said again, his head in Armand's lap as his former-and-again lover ran his fingers through Louis' dark hair. "All of them." He watched as Antoine stood beside the piano with the Stradivarius tucked beneath his chin, watchful of Sybelle's every movement, slave to her permissions. And she for her part heard his music in some way the rest of them couldn't reach with their words. The piano seemed to become a beast that spoke, the parlor filled every night with conversation as Benji spoke on and on into the night. 

"You mean Lestat." Armand's hands didn't stop, though they hesitated for the briefest moment. Louis couldn't help knowing now that they were both thinking of the man, the feeling of his arms, the sight of him there on the cathedral floor broken and terrifyingly vulnerable (a shock no matter how they had both brought him low). 

And they were thinking, too, of how that man had gone. 

Louis had seen glimpses of Lestat over the decade, had turned the world upside down furiously seeking him out when his daughter had fallen into the hands of the depraved. The man he'd found had been shocked, furious, all the proper emotions. But he hadn't been  _ there _ .

(Had he ever? Louis wondered, sometimes, how long it had been since he'd seen any true face of that man. If he ever had.)

_ Not here _ , Armand thought to him, and he understood, and they let the music wash over them as if things could be alright.

***

The conversation was no better for having fermented. 

"He will be angry. He hasn't overthrown anything in too long..." The clouds on the ceiling above their bed seemed to lower, though they'd been painted only the year before. It was more than due for a new design, but they'd let time slip by them. Foolish.

"A rebel is only a rebel until they can seize power," Armand voiced Louis' thoughts, their conversation a series of movements of logic, the verbal only forms.

"Surely not," Louis said without conviction. Voicing wishes, not beliefs. "Lestat's never wanted power, not when he could have freedom. Even our--association--" It pained him to invoke that time, the seven decades they'd spent with Lestat apparently yearning all the while for someone newer and better. "He was happy enough to escape that dullness half the nights of the week." From the next room, Antoine's music stabbed.

"He's always needed power, caro mio." Armand rolled them gently, with the unnatural coordination of a young ancient, coming to rest with Louis atop his chest. "Did he not wield it against you, for all he loved you?" Still Armand continued to voice Louis' concerns.

"He did." He had, but--They were older now. "But I've hurt him, too." 

"You love him."

Louis clutched his lover. "Yes." It sounded harsh, spoken aloud in this time. No matter how often they'd both said it before, over the past ten years. "He--he needs something. Someone. To--help him."

Cowardly; ashamed. Afraid to say it as it was. He focused upon the interlacing of their legs, Armand's solidity and realness.

"Needs  _ you, _ you mean. As a distraction." Armand had been so good to him. They all had been good, and he'd tried to return that as best he could. And here at last was how he must repay it.

He took a kiss, while he could.

"A focus."

Armand's hands traced over the shape of Louis' body as he no doubt fixed it in his cold and perfect memory. "You mean to hold him in place." 

"Hasn't Benji been saying it for months? We need someone the young can look to. They've chosen Lestat." 

Armand's eyes snapped open, probing Louis' expression. "You accept this. The will of the masses."

"Is that so unlike me?" He smiled, meaning to play it off as a joke. 

"You follow only so long as you seek truth. Or because you are afraid. But you have no need to fear anymore." Fingers on the cold, hard skin that had been bitter-dark so recently from his attempted death. "What are you chasing?" 

"I've learned, at last." How he wished he hadn't. That he could shut his ears as he had in the Rue Royale, and live the weeks or months until judgement day in contentment. "We cannot stay as we are. That way lies ruin." Benji had been right about that. Louis' chest ached. 

"You intend to leave me this time." Armand didn't push him away. He was simply no longer within Louis' grasp, stretching instead nearby in a practiced model's languor. "You needn't give your desires a noble coating." 

Did he want to go to Lestat? He had, once. He'd been pulled by that siren song, that bold and impetuous statement, to try and make things anew. It had been right and true for a glorious moment, as those nights of Burning brought them close together. And then it had been over, and Lestat had pulled him along laughing to David Talbot's house, and he knew. He was a pretty prize, but not one and only. Meant to stay in place so that Lestat might have a central lighthouse, and never go wandering himself. 

Well, two could play such games.

"He must know what we are to one another," he whispered, seeking the entrance, the way back into his lover's grace for the moments they had left. "And I won't stop loving you as I do."

_ Please don't stop loving me _ , he didn't say. Armand's heart was a strange and fragile place, an environment that must be protected, and though the ways in which he did so might seem harsh--

Perhaps it was for the best, if Armand could stop, could see him as nothing more than an object. He had once, after all.

"I will hate you for this," Armand said, and the  _ heat _ of such a feeling was as incalculable as his hands were careful. He would not harm Louis, never, never directly. He could kill Louis without ever touching him. "But my love, I will hate him more."

"Please," Louis held on, resisting his new inhuman strength, his morals and foibles. He wanted, almost, to weep at the thought of losing these beloved touches for another set, another love. They were so different, his men.

(Masters, they'd been, once upon a time.)

"Please, Armand. I'll love you still." Bald truth he'd been afraid to voice all those times it might have made a difference.

"As you do him."

"Yes." He moved restlessly, yearning, begging, almost, for the bite that would obliterate all and create a moment of false clarity. Nothing was ever truly solved or answered in the act, but the mere drugging pleasure of it would soothe for a moment.

(And make it hurt all the more, when those stalking steps that came periodically about their paper-doll home entered its doors with lit match in hand. Lestat would be there eventually.)

"He's not the same, Louis."

"No, he's not. But he's--he'll be good to me now."

Not the same, not as he once was, and not the same as Louis' dear Armand. Not the same sort of family.

"Please," he said again, shameless.

"There is no danger from him." Armand's fingers were warm on his cool flesh. Louis had waved the others off to feed without him, fretting over what he was to say.

Louis wanted to feed. He wanted the burn of alcohol in his system, anything to dull the panic of this decision. It was an old, old vice, clinging to him long after even Paul's ghost had departed. 

"Stay," Armand said. There was no song accompanying it, no whisper as there might've been when they met in that Paris theatre. Just the word, naked on its own, and Armand yielding now to his embrace. 

"You wanted to say more." Louis wound his fingers into auburn curls, cradling the back of his found-again love's head.

Armand sighed, a mortal habit picked up for the benefit of his now immortal charges. "Lestat is not a danger...yet."

"You think he will be." It felt strangely like sedition. But Lestat was no more than any of the rest of them, no matter how he broke the rules. Younger than Armand, stronger than them both. 

"He demands loyalty. It isn't so different from fealty. He'll be more suited to the job than he thinks." Armand's soft lips were against his throat, refusing to bite. Louis saw the things Lestat had written in his book and then some--small, wild eyed Armand streaked with soot and red tears, ordering weak young vampires into the fire rather than out into a world that seemed to be crumbling, crumbling. Not again, not that. 

"If he changes..." He wanted to believe it would be better. He needed to. "It would be unlike you not to have a plan of some kind."

"I have no plans," Armand said, pushing Louis down and away so that their eyes met once more. "A lover is not a thing one  _ plans _ . Louis--" His spellbinding amber eyes, the first thing Louis had noticed and loved about him so long ago when the needling music filled his skull and battered his thoughts to kindling, were filled with turmoil. His Botticelli mouth pursed. "Louis, if you want him more, say so. If I am but a waypoint for you. We would all believe it."

"No!"

"Then do not ask me to do this." His little love was grave and fierce, magnificent, and Louis found himself grateful for this refusal despite its foolhardiness. "We will find another way."

So firm that Louis wanted to agree, but.

"None as easy."

"Was anything worth doing ever easy?" His hands, his long teenage hands, on Louis' cheeks and neck, and he wanted to weep as he leaned in. Gratitude? Frustration?

Love, only?

"I am," he whispered his fear and his guilt.

"No heart is so impenetrable as yours." Armand had a way of looking at him as if he were a problem to be solved, carefully stroking his still human skin. "And those that enter it are never gone." 

Ah, Claudia. He'd never forgiven, and Armand had never asked him to. It only lay beside them, the bitterness of it lesser than their love. "That number includes you." He smiled in spite of himself, a small thing. 

"I forced my way in, whether you knew it or not. Delicate theft is theft all the same." Armand kissed him then, hesitating so minutely that it seemed an illusion. Louis had learned to catch that fear recently. 

"Do you regret it?" He held that thin body to his, both of them easy to crush underfoot, fodder for the threat that had now made itself known on Benji's radio show. 

"No." Ever blunt, even gentle as his touch was. "I told you my love was jealous, all consuming. I wanted you, whether you hated me or not." And at that his eyes softened in unspoken grief, and Louis loved him as much as he held to what had passed. 

"So it's only old stubbornness, denying what we must do." He wanted to hear this other option, but he knew. He knew Lestat better than any of them.

"Nonsense," Armand said with the telltale surety that meant he had no idea at all of any other way.

But oh, how Louis wanted to believe. How he wanted to think that this crisis would pass with himself unchanged, still in the arms of his family (plus one, Lestat's other one, the one made to replace himself and his first poor child--)

"One way or the other, please," he made himself yielding, appealing, everything they always wanted of him. He gazed from beneath his lashes. "Please make love to me tonight."

"As a goodbye, you wish me to do this?" That high voice was rough with the emotion so few saw in him, his hands rough too even on Louis' horrid inhuman flesh for just an instant before they relaxed. Such conscious care Armand took with him. "As some little send-off, a sweet memory of how we'll always have New York? I tell you, you  _ need not go _ !"

"And I won't!" Handfuls of flaming copper, springy as wire in his grasp. "I won't without your leave. You are no longer a coven leader, but you are my lover, and without agreement between us what have we?"

"This." He looked perfectly wretched, biting his lip absently. The point of one fang showed through, a reminder that they were unnatural. That they could not only do unnatural, monstrous things -- they were made for it. 

(He hadn't thought so much of being damned of late, had began to hope that there was some answer even if he didn't know how to begin looking, but now the deadening certainty was once more nipping at his heels).

"Pretend I've asked for a gallery." Louis put his hand to Armand's neck, drawing his lover down to the beat of his dead heart. "You loved to humor me when it meant nothing to me." Above them the ceiling was red-gold and shimmering with late afternoon heat, rendered in careful unseen detail to match photos carefully chosen. 

"You think cruelty will provoke me." The scent of blood was powerful between them, muddying the air. 

"I don't need to provoke you." Louis nipped at Armand's ear, "In the end, you'll do what must be done." 

No one disturbed them in their little haven. The eldest were far away yet, the youngest frightened by Armand's apparently pitiful mental prowess. For a moment, they indulged in the lie that what they had could be protected.

From the next room, a lovers' duet threaded in, and Louis let himself believe it was for them. (They had never been that innocent together, but it was a pleasant fantasy of a love five hundred years out of synch.)

They surrendered themselves to one another, touching with longtime familiarity and newborn desperation.

The music was outside, now, not in his head as in the past, and the desire so much keener for it. Proof that they could change, though their bodies did not. If Armand could change, then surely--

Naked together, like mortal lovers, though they did not do the things mortals did. Yet Louis found himself on his belly, in Armand's arms, stretching and aching in every fiber of his damned flesh, and it was beautiful.

Nearly as beautiful as the lies said he was.

They tangled as though the knot of their bodies would be Gordian, as though even that hadn't been rent asunder by violence and the sword of a conqueror.

"You are mine," Armand hissed.

"Always."

They had made no promises not to lie to one another, after all. Or themselves.


	3. Giselle

**Armand**

Armand was still holding the chess piece in his hand as he watched the revelry unfolding, their courtly fiddling as Rome burned. Over and over his thumb felt along the silhouette of the black queen, his mind becoming static at the comfort of the repetitive motion. 

There wasn't much time now. He'd felt the circle closing with each new face at the door, each smiling elder and terrified child they brought at their side (he had seen only a flash of Daniel's familiar ash blond hair, and then he was gone, ushered off by Marius to speak with Pandora). 

Gregory's words were still with him. The others wanted Lestat to lead. They clung to it now, the same way he'd clung to the Children of Darkness and their rituals. He knew this fervor. He knew it very, very well. 

You couldn't fight fervor. And he couldn't break it as Lestat had once broken him (beautiful Lestat, kind Lestat, cruel Lestat, who'd stolen his heart without wanting it; they'd each left the other to die in their time, and now it was beyond them). 

Armand only knew two things from his long years (now discounted as too few): burning and subterfuge. There was more than enough of the former now for his liking. 

Lestat would come. Lestat would lead in his careless way, shattering everything and paying no mind to where the shards fell and who they cut. And if Armand stood against him, they would throw him out to the Voice's tender mercies. 

_ Survive _ . The thought had burned in him for centuries, and now it told him Louis was right.

He'd made a promise, or near enough, but such was life. Vows changed over time, and obligations trumped desires.

A leader must be willing to sacrifice, to entrap the enemy into a spot where they had no further moves. Lestat had never learnt  _ willing _ sacrifice.

But then, this was no true movement; just a cult of personality. Fearful huddling about the one person they all believed might have the charm to save them, and charm wore thin over the centuries.

(Armand remembered towers and broken bones, pavement and a crushed face. Louis said that Lestat could have changed, but how he feared. Not as much as he feared the Burnings.)

Benji's voice called out into the aether, radio waves and electrons carrying him to all the world. His calls would bring Lestat one way or another, certainly if Antoine joined Sybelle in the musical interludes. That risen fledgling marked the end of Trinity Gate.

To traffic in flesh was filthy and awful. Sinful, if anything was. And to do so with flesh holding one's beloved, more so. But Louis was willing, and Louis was intelligent.

_ One last kiss _ , Armand kept thinking.  _ One last touch. We could burn, flame out, but neither of us are given to such impulses in truth. _

And so he must go to his love and tell him.

Louis was a dazzling presence when he chose. Though rhapsodies were composed to his beatific sadness, few noted when he roused himself to charming smiles and courtly conversation.  The gentle drawl in his speech touch vowels here and there, lending warmth to his gentle nods. Louis was humanity not as it was but as vampires saw it--terribly, delightfully fragile, irresistible and forever removed.  He was suited for the tiresome intrigue they found themselves on the precipice of: those around him would lose themselves in fantasies, and Louis would keep his counsel as he always had. 

It took some time to snatch Louis back from the dance floor, his competent steps in high demand, but at last they tittered amongst themselves and shooed the pair of "young ones" away as if it were some heated tryst. Even now they thought him a child, when for centuries he'd been left to think he was the last bastion of age. 

"Has something happened?" Louis was touching his arm, the artifice of moments before gone. Pure. Simple. Direct. Lie or no, he cherished it.

_ One last kiss _ . Armand leaned up, hands on straight shoulders to avoid disarranging silken black hair, and it was nearly chaste with all the care he took. For Louis must appear pure for Lestat: the kind of Holy Virgin his maker had always deluded himself he'd found.

Louis' hands were not so ginger, grasping Armand's hips and holding him close even when he sought to go down from tiptoe, but they released him when he pushed. So gentle. Too gentle, and that was both what would make sending him to this unbearable, and the reason he must be the one.

"You were right." He forced himself to look Louis in the eye when he said it, not down to where his thumb brushed a damp lower lip. "You were correct. It is an effective way."

Green, green that Lestat had likened to lasers in the supplement to his first book. Green like sunlight through leaves, that strange glow lost to them all and so wonderfully captured here. Green like bottle glass, and why did Armand favor those given to the vice of drink?  _ Would Louis need to resort to that? _

They were not stupid eyes. They were soft, shocked and pained  _ (oh, dearest, you trusted me--my beloved fool--) _ and then cool and resolute.

He'd really thought, somewhere deep down, that he would see relief there. He should not be glad that he didn't.

"You've been persuaded?"  _ Ah, yes. Intellectualize it, Louis. Make it a discussion, not a loss. _

Armand knew him so well, the script named “Louis” in his head well and lovingly marked, and at times like this he knew him almost not at all. 

"They will follow him, no matter what. And he was the one to keep the Queen's attention in the last Burning; his love for us saved us once." Such as it was.

He'd still wanted Lestat's love then, when he'd presented his and Daniel's Night Island as a present for all of them. Lestat hadn't wanted it, or him. He'd wanted nothing but his own terms, and now it seemed his terms were satisfactory for the rest of them as well. 

"If we are fortunate," Louis was saying, as if any of this could be evidence of that fact, "whatever animated Akasha also bore her love for Lestat. Maybe it will listen to him." 

Armand scoffed. "It's only possession. If he wishes to call it love, he's a greater fool than I thought." He was slipping, saying such things among so many sharp ears. Marius was no longer the oldest among them, and he couldn't hide from the others so easily. 

Louis didn't kiss him again, but he pulled Armand close, pressing Armand's head to his chest and stroking those auburn curls. "There might yet be meaning in it. Lestat needs someone to steady his hand." 

This was so nearly the Louis he had met in Paris, the desperate seeker of answers. The fervor had cooled in those long, dead years, but that dangerous hope had rekindled into a fragile little flame now doomed to be extinguished. 

"There is no meaning in this." He wanted to question the Voice himself, hold it fast until it explained its every function, but it had never come to him. Forgotten by his maker and his would-be coven and their progenitor. Less worthy, it seemed, even than his own unintended child. There was no revelation for him. Just the impending evil of his actions. 

"They won't notice if we go out." Louis was trying to soothe him, straightening the lace at his collar. "We still need to hunt at our age." His smile was wan and brittle. 

"It isn't safe." Armand's state of mind wasn't worth Louis' safety. "Until we've trapped the Voice under Lestat's control, it could as easily tell some ancient to strike you down." No doubt it would take pleasure in such a thing, to rob the great Lestat of his prize.

"And I must live long enough to prevail upon his kindness, after all." Cynicism was a cruel thing to hear in that romantic voice, the creeping insinuation that his life was worth only what he could be used for.

"You must  _ live _ ," Armand bit out, careful not to crush the fine fabric of Louis' garment in his fist. Wouldn't do--for propriety-- "You are loved, though by monsters, and that is all the good in this life. If you love us, you'll not deprive us of your existence."

"What of my presence?" Armand couldn't begrudge this small outlet of bitterness before the time of resolve.

"We'll cope, until we have you back. Did you not say it could change?" Tempting to soothe, to reach out with his mind and pacify, but he didn't. Those days were over, and Louis needed to go into this clear-headed if at all.

Shaky breath, odd from one so strong and so old. (A mere babe in the woods, suddenly. A slip of paper to be burned.)

Armand had seen more burnings than anyone could have imagined. Boys and girls, young ones, shoveled atop the pyres like coal to a furnace. He knew how the skin would peel and bubble, blackening, until the flames reached the blood and combusted. He knew how they screamed, in the infancy of this immortal life and dying in agony all the same.

"I'm sorry." Louis grasped what he could without violating the new rules that surely must exist; he caught Armand's wrists. "Truly, my--friend. That was uncalled for."

"It was  _ not _ ,” Armand all but shrugged. Let him be cold. Let him be that monster that not an hour before Gregory had assumed he still was. "It was perfectly true, my dearest one. Never forget that you're being treated like so much meat, though the cage be gaudy. Never forget that we traded you, and that we wish we did not have to. Remember me, and this betrayal."

"Not betrayal." He smiled so trembling and pure, and Armand could almost swear he saw tears looming in those centuries-dry eyes (counterpart to Lestat's endless founts). "A sacrifice." He straightened himself needlessly, with tiny familiar motions of a gentleman putting himself to rights, and then looked out the window rather than at Armand. "You'll tell Benji and Sybelle something palatable for me?"

He would tell them nothing at all. Sybelle would accept it; she would fall down upon the scaffolding of her music, she and Antoine, and bide her time. Benji...

Benji still believed Lestat could save them. Believed  _ in _ Lestat, with night after night of rapturous words echoing out across the world. In this, Benji was Louis' child, stirring them all to action. That seed was deep in him, and that passion could too easily turn to railing against the unfairness of it all. He was too young and foolish to know that if Lestat didn't snuff him out, a dozen others would. 

No, Benji couldn't know. 

"I'll keep them safe," he said. 

Louis' lip twitched. "Yes, I suppose that is better. Lies have been the way of our kind for such a long time." 

He left Armand there in the corridor, returning to the lights and music and a chorus of voices. Armand took the chess piece from his pocket and crushed it into powder, condemned now to do as he always did. Wait.


	4. Le Beau et La Bête

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning in end notes

**HRH Prince Lestat de Lioncourt**

The world and the situation might have been dreadful, but at the very least Louis was perfect as always. No; more. More beautifully strong, more ingratiating than even at their reunion so long ago on Lestat's helicopter pad.

He'd missed Lestat, absence making his mysterious heart grow fond indeed. Fond as Lestat's.

Armand had taken good care of him; the quiet life wore well on his smooth features. Even Amel, dwelling behind Lestat's eyes, must surely see the rarity of this prize.

(Dear David was so accommodating, so understanding. For all their trysting in Paris, he stepped aside without a harsh word for the love of Lestat's eternity. Good man.)

The world felt different now. He'd always felt an indomitable certainty that the world wouldn't be rid of him, that he would claw back what was his from a world that had been stealing from him since birth. Now it felt as if everything were already within his grasp, waiting to be plucked at his leisure. His lonely wanderlust was sated with the sense of thousands of voices, of lives at his fingertips. He loved them, all the lives he could peek into on his whim. But none so much as the one that stood before him now. 

Louis' confession had come as the most delightful shock, there to hold him just as he was reeling from the responsibilities now weighting him down. Darling Louis. Patient Louis. Already Lestat ached to hold him again after just a few hours apart. 

Armand's mansion--his, now, he supposed, by the old laws he dimly remembered--was still full to bursting with voices, with ghosts and ancients and young ones dutifully protected at their makers' side. His chest ached again, and there was a murmur of discontent from Amel.  _ Wasn't he enough? Wasn't his love enough? _

But no one was comparable to Louis. 

Lestat found him in the garden, staring up at the stars. How perfectly like him. A miracle of art and communion and melody inside Trinity Gate's walls, and Louis would rather look at cold, dead rocks he could never touch.

For long moments he watched, enjoying the unguarded carelessness of that face and body he'd chosen for his own so long ago. Barely a blink, to Amel. A red rose, beyond full-blown and already pollinated, hung trembling between Louis' fingers. The merest breath would cause the depleted petals to fall, scattering to the paved path like so many drops of blood.

"Stargazing alone, my love?" he asked, and Louis started, face transforming into one of melting joy when Lestat's presence was known.

"Lestat!"

As though it could possibly be anyone else, come to coax Louis back inside to show his rank openly and enjoy its privileges. "I do apologize, my love. I didn't mean to startle you."

He was lying, of course; the very Father of Lies. Hadn't he glided up, feet not touching the ground, just so as to make no sound of warning?

"It's alright." Louis' smiles had always been small and soft, as if they weren't sure how to fit themselves into the makeup of his features. Lestat wanted to kiss that face, hold it near and whisper words of adoration. And wasn't he the prince now?

"Lestat..." Louis demurred, a hint of pink coloring those nearly human cheeks. Lestat had worried, in the aftermath of that terrible night, that that softness would be lost to them all. But no. Louis, it seemed, would outlast all of them yet.

(The thought saddened him somehow, very distantly. He shoved it down and away before Amel could catch wind of it).

"Can you blame me?" He smiled, twining his fingers through black silk. "To have you back after so many years is intoxicating."

"I was never lost." He was holding the rose still, its bright red visage an offer.

"You are always apart from us, my dearest love." Lestat kissed him again, plucking the rose to scatter its petals. The poor thing was dying even then--what better service than to let it serve the beauty of the moment? "My philosopher. A human among monsters."

"You see me so." Louis' eyes, greener than the night-black foliage, glided over Lestat like a physical force. "Have I not changed in these many years?"

"Not a bit," Lestat hastened to reassure. "You see yourself but through a glass darkly, but I know you. You are as perfect as when first I made you, for all your loneliness." Such a sweet mouth, upraised when lashes fell like fine fringe upon a lady's gown. Closed eyes so near made for an invitation not to be turned down, and oh, the kisses he'd so often missed when apart from his soul's home.

Louis' breath (so human, so human) was a series of choked little sounds, nearly sobs, and to be loved in such a way shook Lestat like an earthquake.

"Come inside." Lestat could already feel the beginning of stiff hesitation as he tried to draw Louis toward the light. "I need you with me." 

"All these adoring eyes are here for you." Louis was looking at him, through him, and to the passenger inside his mind. "It isn't like you to give up your spotlight." 

"How can I not show you off?" he teased, grinning ear to ear. "They all love you, Louis. You're our heart."  _ And you're mine _ . 

"If you insist." Louis softened into the arm Lestat had thrown over his shoulders, and Lestat steered them both inside. 

For all his complaining, Louis was a natural as Lestat knew he would be. His gentlemanly charm had won them favor in many a social circle, back when everyone dressed in lace and velvet and beautiful frock coats. Standing in this room was like being in some beautiful space outside of time, where the young ones in their t-shirts and jeans were the alien outliers amongst the high fashion. It centered as few things had for years, since his body had become what it was (had he been made for this? all along, had his body been formed to be the vessel for some stranger's purposes? He didn't want to think about it). 

Every face was the picture of adoration and aglow with happiness.  _ He'd _ done that. He'd brought them all together like this. Marius had given him a small approving nod, already beginning to draw himself off as he thought on the important task Lestat had granted him. Their little prophet was strangely absent, perhaps at loose ends now that there was no great threat to chronicle.

No matter; Lestat would speak with him sooner or later. His perspicacity had done well, for one so young. But then, he was of Marius' line, after all. Strong and clever.

He must have found Louis such a dreadful bore, poor thing--just lurking about, silent and bookish.

(It had been an awfully long time, Lestat thought, as he squired his lover about. So many years alone for the sensitive soul he adored, but he'd needed it. Louis understood. He'd always known Louis would be understanding.)

_ Had he? _ He shoved the thought down, unexamined, and mingled with the ancients, his powerful passenger's favorites insofar as it was capable of. Those it knew of old.

Louis showed to such advantage to them, and they with their icy more-than-immortal calm showed appreciation for Lestat's chosen in turn. If it was--odd, proprietary, how they stroked his hair and grasped his shoulders, speaking to Lestat only, well, they were all of their times. It was respectful; that was what truly mattered.

And Louis had always so wanted for more company. He'd love having these ancient ears to bend. And they loved him, would love him...

"I think it's past time we say our goodnight." He smiled broad, roguish, and impossible to refuse. It would be hours yet before dawn, some protested, but Lestat only had to nod to his companion and they nodded. So  _ young _ . Such precious time. 

Lestat loved the room he'd picked out for his stay, with its high dark ceilings and dark and restful sheets. Black was terribly cliched now, but deep down in his heart it thrilled him. The room hadn't been chosen to Louis' tastes, but then his beloved had been content to molder away in a hideous old shack before Lestat had done the world the favor of wiping it out. Things were better now. This was better. 

"Alone at last," he sighed, flopping dramatically onto the bed. 

"Are we?" Louis was watching him, and it was with heated embarrassment that Lestat realized he'd already begun to forget his passenger. Oh he knew he was there, constantly, and when he wandered out into the hall. But it had begun to feel like a part of him, the aching part that cried and feared, had at last begun to go silent. 

_ Go on then _ , He thought to his no-longer-lonesome self.  _ Give a man some damned privacy _ .

And Amel was laughing at him, but went all the same. No tricks between them. No lies. How wonderful to have such perfect honesty. 

He turned onto his side, propping his head on his hand with a flirtatious grin. "We are completely alone, you and I." 

Louis nodded, relief slumping his shoulders as he began to undo his tie, only to stop. "None of my things are here." 

Lestat didn't want to think of where they might be. "We can have them sent for by those ghosts you've trained so nicely." His patience squirmed and faltered. "Come here, before I'm forced to ravish you."

Louis swallowed, throat bobbing in the gap of collar, eyes wide in charming apprehension.

"Would you really?"

"What do you think, my love?" Lestat bared his fangs, a wolf like those he'd slain once upon a time. It felt good to be the wolf instead of the little girl in red cape, the beast to the beauty. And this beauty was so like the one in the cartoon film, all foibles and bookishness and sweet tenderness. Sweet tender flesh. It was good to be a beast, carrying one's love off rather than being carried. "I've not changed so much, since the past."

And yes, Louis' unnecessary breath came faster, arousal clear in the tension of his frame; he remembered how it had been when they were happy.

All beasts were princes, truly. And Lestat's beauty had come to love him.

Loved him so much, and had been so lonely--his perfect hands shook with need as they danced down his buttons, shucking jacket and shirt quicker even than Lestat could strip them from him.

"I missed you," Louis said against his mouth. "I remember."

The whole  _ world _ remembered; between the two of them their story had been splashed across every headline, all but written in the stars. But this moment now, as he trapped Louis beneath him, Louis' hair a dark halo; this was his alone.

"My most perfect creation." Lestat kissed the curve of Louis' neck, seeing the vein all but arching up to meet him, but he relented. "I don't know how I lived without you." 

"You were missed," Louis' breath hitched, his arms winding delicately around Lestat's neck. "All of us..."

Lestat didn't want to hear about "all of them." He was glad of it, he'd told himself, that Armand had taken care of Louis. That was true. But he wanted those memories obliterated by the magnitude of his presence, the bliss of their for-the-ages romance. He bit down on Louis' shoulder, eliciting a cry and a shudder of pleasure at once. The mark was ugly and red, and beneath it he made another, and another, until his beloved was trembling beneath him. 

And then he bit his wrist, as he had so many centuries ago, and let his all-consuming blood drip-drip-drip over the wounds. They were beyond gods now, untouchable. But there was power in rituals, and like this they could begin again as if nothing had passed.

Again he did it, and again, tying the string between them ever tighter until he could fairly feel it cutting into their flesh. He would make love like this all the night long, if he could, and Louis was newly passionate, wild for Lestat-and-Amel's blood as he'd never been before. No refusals; no worries. Just need and willingness, and a delicious piquant fear too confused to determine the source. Naked, inside and out. Shocked to outcry, once or twice, and how even those soft sounds must have carried in a house of powerful immortals, Blood Gods and their offspring. All must know what Lestat did with his consort.

His right.

By the end, Louis was warm and relaxed in his arms with dawn threatening, and then Lestat truly saw a miracle: red crusted about his thick lashes, rimming his closed eyes.

Louis didn't weep. Not like Lestat.

To have moved his lover so far, to  _ this _ level of affection--truly Lestat had been away too long. He felt almost as though his shared heart would break at so simple a proof.

"I love you, mon cher."

"I'm all yours," Louis whispered with a sleepy smile, already dying in his arms though Lestat would have the pleasure of watching him for hours yet. "Only you."

"Goodnight, my sleeping beauty."

"Good day, you mean. Damned..."

"What was that?" 

But Louis was gone, made a beautiful corpse by what he'd once thought was magic. It was magic still, in its way, to have him so close. 

What had he done to deserve this?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains scenes of sex which is verbally agreed to, and in which one party has absolutely decided they will engage in. That party is nonetheless not a _willing_ participant; the coercion and ulterior motives are implicit but present, rendering consent given effectively null. The chapter is told from the perspective of the aggressor, who ignores multiple cues that something is off about the situation.


	5. Diamonds and Toads

**Benji "Little Man" Mahmoud**

Benji had known better, even from the start. What he hadn't known was the thing that should have been obvious: that nobody could resist Louis' lies.

But.

But, but, but. But he'd been newer, smarter. But he'd been forewarned.

But Louis had--

The motherfucker. The sonofabitch.

He'd been so  _ sincere _ .

And Benji was old enough to know better. (Though he hadn't been, once upon a time. Taken advantage of in his youth.)

Armand, though, was a hundred times more experienced, a thousand times wiser, and had spent a million seconds tolerating Louis' lying tongue. And now Armand was curled into his armchair like a child or Sybelle, wrecked by the trust they'd both placed in the most treacherous of all monsters.

Benji could still hear them all in the meeting, the ancients hands pointing to Armand and calling him "weak." Benji had never thought of his father-brother-friend as weak. He'd seen Armand apoplectic with rage, seen him cool and distant and considering. He'd seen him bloom into small smiles when Louis came along, that cheating--

But he'd never seemed weak before. 

Now it was too easy to notice. He was wearing an oversized sweater and picking at the fibers one at a time, making a steadily growing pile beside him on the floor. His full lips were pressed into a thin white line, and he'd cut his hair nearly down to his skull. How had he not noticed?

The suits had been such a change. People had started addressing him as "sir." They'd asked sincerely if Armand was his young cousin, his ward. A child. 

"Armand?" His own voice startled him. The mansion seemed enormous now that everyone had gone. Now that one person, particularly, had gone.

“Benji.” Armand often forgot to smile when they were alone, but he did now, which was worse. It meant he was  _ trying _ for Benji’s sake, even in the midst of all--this. “Was there something you wanted to discuss?” 

What to say to that? He could follow Armand’s lead, maybe pretend that all was well--another of their late night talks, the kind they hadn’t had since...since everything, really. It  _ should _ be, with the elders finally come home to roost and take responsibility for their get. It was what Benji had wanted all along; that, and to meet his hero, the young-old secret-celebrity to lead them all.

Be careful, they always said, and he’d wished anyway.

“No.” He nudged the brim of his hat back, enough to let Armand see his whole face as he walked over to stand looming by the chair. With his hands in his pockets, he must look like Baby Face Nelson getting ready to administer a tune-up. How he’d love to; somebody deserved it. “What about you?”

"Hmm." Armand was looking through him, still seeing the party that had dissipated from their home with the thrall of vampires gone their separate ways. They were almost alone again, but for Marius' lingering presence, and yet there was a sense of awareness of a grand "we" that hadn't been there before. It was what he'd always wanted. But.    
He threw his arms around Armand's neck as he hadn't since he was a child, feeling that the body beneath the lush cable knit.   
"Benji..." Armand's mind was a disgruntled mess, he cacophony almost frightening in how it replaced the placid lake of music that Armand presented to them all. Delicate hands gripped his shoulders. "It's alright to miss him."    
"I don't!" He wasn't the one who needed comforting, dammit. "We're better off."    
"You're imagining things as mortals see them," Armand said. "Our kind doesn't hold to such fidelity."    
Then what had been the point in making this their home? What had been the point in making it feel eternal?

“You deserve better,” Benji said, feeling its truth in his bones. Rightness, righteousness--responsibility had been his watchwords, abandonment the crime he’d railed against to all the world. And of all of them he’d thought Louis understood. “He shouldn’t have used you like that, if he was just going to…”

(And there was an ugly thought, that it was Benji’s broadcasts that had lured their prince back into Louis’ orbit. Silky, snakelike social climber, filling Benji with words and histories and crying about family.)

“We need different things at different times. It’s not a crime.” Armand worried the alpaca wool, deep charcoal and worn thin at the shoulders, then visibly forced himself to stop and grasp Benji’s upper arms instead.

“So why did he need us, then?” He’d never felt so angry, not like this. He’d always thought he could make his little world and smile through the rest--protect Sybelle from her brother, protect the young from the Voice. But he’d  _ trusted _ Louis.

“We needed  _ him!” _ Tight grip, reminder that neither of them was actually weak or fragile or even childish, except when compared to those who would rule.  _ “We _ did. All of us.”

“I don’t!”

“Not any more,” Armand said lowly, head down but face too clear without his hair to hide behind. “You have...grown well.”

It warmed him to hear it, the simple part of him that craved the love of that fallen angel he and Sybelle had found on a rooftop (Sybelle, who had said nothing, who gave no indication of even knowing Louis was gone, except that she played dirges). "Then let me protect you." 

That made Armand laugh, a rippling sound that shook his entire frame and doubled him over. Benji's face flushed, but it was the spike of agitation between their minds that made Armand look up. "It's you who need protected," he intoned. "Your voice is all of ours now. Remember that." 

And that was all he would say on the matter. The words stayed with Benji as he went to his nightly broadcast, as he spoke of the importance of loyalty and trust and honesty between them as kin, even more crucial now that they were building this shining new kingdom. 

***

At some point Daniel Molloy had wandered in to watch them broadcast, dirty-shoed feet up on the couch in an act of utter deliberateness (Benji knew because they'd locked eyes, and Daniel had stretched and ground himself deeper into the fabric).

Daniel had strange, violet eyes that flickered around the room as the music went on, looking over and over at the door until Benji began to wonder if he'd expected the guest. When the broadcast was finally over, Daniel made no effort to get up.

"Got yourself a nice little niche, don'tcha?"

Benji had respected this man once, in the abstract, despite the madness. He’d fancied himself following in the “boy reporter’s” footsteps just a little, when he donned his careful suit and tie and sent his words out into the aether with truths hidden in pap for the unknowing masses. With him here, now, though…

He knew what this man had done and been before he died. Lestat aired everyone’s dirty laundry, and Benji had done his reading. (Truthful Lestat, letting him know Louis couldn’t be trusted, and Benji hadn’t listened.)   
Benji regarded his guest carefully. "I didn't know you were listening in. You never came to any of the meetings when everyone was here." 

"Eh, not my style," said the man who'd found death hunting after the life stories of vampires. "I didn't really care about any of this. Same shit, different city, different year. We're all dying no matter where we go."    
Daniel bounced his knee, fidgeting with his hands. "Fuck, I miss smoking sometimes." 

"How can you not care?" He refused to match the man's jaded tone. "We're witnessing the dawn of a new era! How can you be so cynical?"

The door clicked as Antoine made his escape. Sybelle took up the melancholy notes of "Lullaby of Birdland." The missing, hidden notes of jazz had begun to fascinate her, offering infinite variation on every line. 

"Funny thing about it," Daniel was saying. "Once you notice all the corpses piled up around the base of a new era, it takes the shine off a little. You and me aren't made for morning in America, little man." He huffed a laugh.

Benji tightened his jaw, hating how his name became so diminutive on those lips. 

"But then I guess we don't have to worry about it, do we. We've got protection. Makes us special."    
He didn't even know. Armand had come to him after, taken him out hunting as he rarely did with anyone, and he didn't even  _ know _ \--

“The Elders have come back,” Benji said rather than pursue that thought further. Armand was too raw, so he told himself. It was too recent for him to be trying  _ that, _ and anyway, Daniel was Marius’s. “There’s going to be structure now.”

“And lucky you, you get to be the mouthpiece.” Daniel’s smile must have been sweet once; his teeth were a hair crooked, just enough to make him seem humanly boyish. But it didn’t reach his eyes, and his words had gone rancid.

“I’m not a mouthpiece. I tell the truth.” Unlike some.

“Sounds safe. I’m not judging.” The older man rolled and shifted to look up at the ceiling. It had been repainted since--everything, and though Benji was glad to have one that Louis had never touched, the particular choice Armand had made with it was… unsettling.

Flat turquoise, the cloudless edge-faded expanse of the most perfect desert noon, and a recessed light directly overhead cleverly concealed so as to look like the deadly sun. The most effective sky yet, and the one unattainable by any but the very oldest of them. (And Lestat, with his deep tanning. And the other one.)

“But have you thought about what it means to have this all revolve around power and age?”

“It means our tribe will finally be  _ protected _ ! We’ll have their wisdom and strength to help us--”

“Ah yeah, Lestat and Marius’ wisdom,” Daniel said with a nasty laugh at his own lover. “Forever.”

"It--" He wasn't stupid. He'd never been stupid, even when he hadn't been educated. "It won't come to that."

"Is this one of those democratic monarchies I've heard so much about?" Daniel feigned awe.

"If you're so worried about it, why aren't you out there?" Benji shot back. "Isn't the voice of a press even more important to keep powers in line?" 

"Ah, the good old fourth estate." Daniel shook his head. "Sorry. I'm done stickin' my neck out. I lost my shot at being Murrow back when newspapers still mattered." 

"So you don't care about anyone." His hands tightened into fists. He'd been so stupid, thinking, "Not even Armand?" 

Those violet eyes could turn to glass in an instant. "It's fair game if someone gives up caring about you first. Isn't that what you've been saying?" 

Not so out of it as he pretended, after all.

“That’s--” He drew himself up, taking refuge in his propriety compared to the retro ripped jeans and ironic (or was it?) FRANKIE SAY RELAX shirt. “That’s different. Armand still cares about you, he just couldn’t…”

_ Deal with you. _

With Daniel’s sickness.

He’d been the same sometimes, with Sybelle. He hadn’t understood, and he’d wanted to be free in this brave new world. But he hadn’t, had he? A little worm of guilt gnawed at him, telling him what was right was in opposition with what he’d said. He’d been feeling that a lot lately. 

Daniel snorted and rolled onto his belly, finger skating over touchscreen searching some pathetic podcasting site (Benji didn’t care, wasn’t worried about ratings or competition. It wasn’t like that; he was a Voice. Still.)

(Daniel was so--childish.)

“Don’t worry, Squirt. I know it doesn’t matter, just like you.”

Benji ground his teeth, his fangs showing. Hard to say which of them would win in a fight, with the blood Daniel'd taken from Marius after his making, but the man certainly seemed keen to find out. Crazy Daniel. Benji could set him on fire before he knew what hit him. 

"Don't get sore. I'm saying neither of us matters." Daniel's bangs, long when he died, fell over his face. "We were made for the hell of it. Doesn't matter. Maybe this whole thing will work out just swell with the new king."

"Prince," Benji said softly. 

"And we'll all be a happy little family of killers. That doesn't matter either. What matters is us little fish survive," Daniel finished.

"So you think we're evil too." Just like Armand. 

"Didn't say that. I think it's beautiful, what we do. That's how I lost it, didn't you know?" He laughed, bitter.

"But it's killing because we feel like it, even the ones who don't need to--that's just honest. I like honest. Helps me keep from sinking again."

Honest. "You weren't honest when you wrote about Louis."

That name had a subtle but immediate effect, a tensing of muscles all over Daniel's gangly body. "Heard he left."

"Of course. We couldn't do anything more for him, so he went to better prospects." It shouldn't hurt so bad. He shouldn't still be such a child. But.

"Gonna need you to watch your mouth, squirt." Daniel wasn't looking at him.

Their Prince demanded respect for his Consort (there were only so many terms for a marital alliance). Publicly. Benji could adhere to that, as a performer. In private, he knew things. Knew Louis.

“What,” he mocked, “You saying he took care of you, after you served your purpose?”

“I’m saying he wasn’t obligated. And he had his reasons. Expected better, poor bastard.” It would have sounded careless, if not for the threatened tension in his shoulders, the victimlike curve of his spine. 

“He’s done alright for himself. Better than you.”

“Better than I did, or better than being with me?” The thing he clicked was about films, just films. Not history or news or anything that mattered. And Benji could hear it with his vampire hearing, pouring out of the earbuds loud as conversation a room away.

"Both," he said just for spite, snatching one of the headphones out. It tinkled on, a dull roar between them. Benji sighed, frustrated. "Forget it. This isn't why I wanted to talk to you."

"Yeah, well...." Daniel sized him up, still on the defensive. "I haven't had a lot of practice talking to people lately."

Daniel paused, seemingly waiting for more niceties, and when none came-- "Well?" 

"I know you've been out hunting with Armand." 

The tension redoubled. "Yeah, so?" 

He fidgeted with the sleeve of his shirt. "How'd he seem?" 

"Same as he always does. All those years he had to actually talk to me and now he's expecting me to read his thoughts again." In spite of his words, Daniel's tone was wistful. 

Right. The silence. The reason Marius had made Benji and Sybelle himself before returning them. Even Armand seemed grateful for that. 

"Armand isn't weak," he blurted out, as if someone might be listening. They’d dismissed him during the meetings, but they didn’t know. He'd always protected them. He was still protecting them, even after the man he'd trusted had abandoned them. 

Daniel was watching him carefully, and it occurred to Benji too late to close his thoughts as he'd been thought. "He really lucked out, finding you." 

The statement threw Benji off, enough that Daniel was able to wriggle himself free.

"What do you mean?" he asked, wary. 

Daniel's smile was sad. "You wanna protect him, but you're not strong enough to control him. C'mon, I know you read all about it." 

He had. As soon as he could get his hands on it, and many times now that he was older. "What about you?" 

"I wanted to hurry up and get away from him." Daniel turned his face away. "So it's good things worked out like they did. I loved him. And I didn't trust him as far as I could throw him." 

"He had his reasons," Benji jumped in.

"Yeah. Funny how that seems to come to light with our type, isn't it?"

“He deserves better. I should never have…” Benji’d wanted to protect Armand, and he  _ hadn’t _ . For his own selfish reasons, he’d allowed Louis to move in, and ingratiate himself, and  _ charm _ them all. He’d seen what a threat it was, that quiet regard that peeked out of his brother and father. And he could have stopped it, if he’d tried.

Pure neglect.

“I should have sent him packing.”

Daniel’s lips thinned with something like disappointment, but he nodded. “It’s good you care, anyway. About Armand.”

Benji felt himself dismissed,  _ ignored _ by the lowest of the low on the totem pole (just like him, before he started his show, before the Elders respected him as a Voice--and then only begrudgingly), and it shouldn’t matter, except for what he heard scrabbling at the other side of a barrier just slightly too thick for his youthful powers.

He’d gotten used to listening.

"...You do miss him, don't you?" he asked. The other vampires had been so eager to talk to him, the voice they knew from the radio. But eyes had passed over Armand with suspicion or fear or dismissal, colored by old grudges or present fear of threats.  _ "You pay the price of your actions,"  _ Armand had told him when he mentioned it, eyes distant and dark as they'd been when he'd started spouting talk about their "evil."

And he saw Daniel swallow, thick and human. "Yeah, well. We've got different lives now, so."

"But you're here now." He pushed like he would in an interview. 

"What do you want me to say, kid?" Daniel snapped. "'Yeah, I wanna sweep in and steal him from you?'"

"No." He couldn't, anyway. "I wanna know if you care." Really and resolutely, from the one who'd said all their kind could love.

“Never stopped.” His purple eyes wouldn’t meet Benji’s when he spoke without thought or hesitation--they searched the air like one listening, or Listening. “He was my life.”

His throat moved like Louis’ as he jammed his earbuds back in, turned up high even for a human. For him, it must be deafening.

“But you left.” Benji leaned in, touched his bony wrist and kept himself from squeezing. His fingers didn’t go quite all the way around, and never would.

“I was  _ taken _ .” By Marius, the powerful, statuesque being to whom Benji owed all. The advisor to their Prince. Such wisdom... “ For the best; he needed something else at the time.”

_ We needed him _ .

Benji couldn’t hear thoughts over the echo of idiots talking about cartoons, but Daniel’s face wasn’t relaxed. And it wasn’t stupid. Benji wasn’t, either. Except when he was. He breathed deep and needless before taking a chance.

“He needs something now.”

Daniel chewed and licked his lips like a smoker wanting a nicotine fix, but at this he stilled.

"I thoughts kids weren't supposed to want their parents get remarried." Breezy, but Benji could see through it now. 

"I'll be 32 in a couple months," he said flatly. 

Daniel winced like he'd been shot. "Bad age. My sympathies." 

"I don't need them." He reached over and pulled the headphones out of their jack, pausing the broadcast. "I need help." 

"Your dad know you're asking?" 

"He wouldn't have come to you if he didn't miss you." That much Benji knew. 

"What're you, a mind reader?" And then, realizing, Daniel's expression grew sad. "I guess you'd know better than me." 

"So stay!" he pushed. "You both want to." 

"Until Marius wants to go. Then he'll be worse than if I'd just ignored him," Daniel said. 

It occurred to Benji that he was stealing someone. That probably, if he was fair, he should feel guilty about doing just what Lestat had done. He wasn't. Maybe that meant he was finally an adult. "So tell him you don't wanna go." 

"It's..." Daniel appeared flummoxed for a minute. "It's just...complicated, alright?" 

"I could use your help. More people are going to want to call now." He wanted Daniel's stories, too, about the old days of radio.

“You offering me a job, squirt?” Lopsided smile, loose-limbed sprawl. It lacked the decorum Louis had always brought even to his most casual puddling on the furniture. “You know I’m a millionaire, right? Every time Lestat decides to sell a story, Annie gets her cut.”

_ (Slouching proof of artifice, only visible by comparison.) _

“I’m asking for help.” Manipulation and truth all at once, like closing a deal on a half-historic property and promising the owners whose son had died there that it would always be a real part of the community. Coffeeshops were part of the community. “I’m the Voice.” 

_ (The Voice was in Lestat; the Voice had tried to kill him and anyone else too “weak” to earn the privilege of existing. But that was what they called him now, the frightened lower-case voices who called him, and he took it.) _

“Right. You’ve got the job. Time to live up to it.”

“That’s just it--I’m an entertainer, not a  _ journalist _ !” He let his voice slip, edging up out of the low register he usually employed. Whiny, childish; natural. Notker would love it, he sensed, if he were foolish enough to let it be heard at large. “I need someone to keep me honest.”

And something shifted, still drowned by tinny voices but palpable nonetheless. Something hard, iron, showed behind cheap purple glass. “Don’t say that if you can’t live up to it, kid. You signed up to be State Controlled Media. You ready to listen to Deep Throat, if he tells you the truth?”

Benji’s first thought was of pornography. And that--that was the problem.

"I need to." Resolute. He needed to be that too. "I hate lies." Lies had insisted they were fine while the Burnings raged. Lies said things could just go on as they were. Lies said that you could trust them, then left. He expected Daniel to laugh at him, but nothing came.

"You might change your tune in a couple centuries." Daniel stuck out his hand. "But I hope not. You've got something here, my man. The real deal."

He remembered Louis introducing himself, offering his hand with courtly politeness and felt a pang in his chest. He gripped Daniel's hand hard, "No lies," he repeated.

"No take backs." Daniel shook once, started to sink back into the couch, then stood instead. "Actually...I think there's someone I better talk to."

He looked like nothing much, with his cheap clothes and sloppy stride. Beautiful, but like the humans were--unconscious and finite. He didn’t look like he’d last the year, a once-gold white-head dandelion ready to be blown away into the night.

But dandelions sowed their seeds.

And weren’t they all Daniel’s, in a way? All the young ones who came after?

His shoulders rolled back and spine straightened into a different man’s posture. Assured and professional. And his phone kept playing nonsense, drowning, distracting nonsense, almost loud enough to cover over the feel of conviction.

Liars. Artifice.

Whatever it was he said to Marius, the old Roman mourned publicly for a week, while Daniel kept to himself to preserve the vizier’s pride. It wasn’t until the man left for Lestat’s castle and his new duties that Daniel at last emerged from his room, model paint and soy newspaper ink staining paperwhite fingers in equal measure.

“You hungry, Squirt?” he asked with face drawn from too long without a hunt, and Benji had danced these steps before.

Still.

“Always. Looking for stories.”

“Well then.”

They killed that night, Little Drink be damned, and after that Sybelle and Antoine’s music drew them home.

They couldn’t be gone too long. The people still needed their Voices.


End file.
